The fascination with all things Jane Austen never seems to diminish, and here is the BBC’s latest offering, a four-part mini-series focused on Jane’s sister, Cassandra. It’s set in 1830, but with many flashbacks to events earlier in Cassy’s life, which inevitably involve Jane. Neither sister ever married, but both were engaged, Cassy to Tom Fowle, who died on a trip overseas, and Jane, very briefly, to Harris Bigg-Wither. The series also invents a suitor for Cassy on a seaside holiday to Sidmouth, possibly because so little else happens in the sisters’ lives.
The 1830s part of the story is centred on some letters Jane wrote to Eliza Fowle. Eliza has been dead for some years, but now her husband is dying and Cassy wants to retrieve the letters, to keep them out of the hands of those who would publish them and expose Jane’s (and Cassy’s) private lives. It’s a flimsy excuse for the story, so we get endless shots of Keeley Hawes, as Cassy, poring over letters, crying or outraged or simply remembering events far in the past (cue flashbacks).
There’s some business with Eliza’s surviving daughter Isabella, and finding a home for her now that her clergyman father is dead and she’ll need to leave the parsonage, and there’s a suitor for Isabella to complicate the issue. Cassy takes charge (she’s portrayed as something of a bossy boots), but in the end her efforts are foiled and Isabella marries her doctor admirer.
I’m not a great expert of the costumes of the 1830s, but it struck me that the very plain fabrics chosen for all the women would be far less practical than the printed patterns which were becoming very common then with greater industrialisation. I wasn’t to impressed with the Regency-era costumes, either; Jane appears to own only one gown, in bright turquoise, and Cassy’s yellow gown was eye-wateringly bright.
However, that’s a minor grumble. The series is worth watching, if you don’t mind the fact that virtually nothing happens. The acting is, as you’d expect from the Beeb, superb. A pleasant way to pass a few hours, although I’m not sure that it does justice to Jane’s personality. I far preferred the fun-loving Jane in Miss Austen Regrets.
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